We had an idea that Motorola's Moto X wasn't doing so well from since their market share dropped during the 3rd Quarter. Now the Wall Street Journal confirms it on the day before the Moto G announcement. According to Strategy Analytics, only 500,000 Moto X phones were sold during the third quarter while Samsung sold 10 million Galaxy S 4 phones. Now we didn't expect Motorola to sell millions upon millions of phones, but this is a little surprising.
One of the factors that might have hindered the success of the Moto X has to be that only AT&T customers could customize their phone with Moto Maker. Just yesterday, Moto Maker was opened to Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
The other factor had to be price. The specs of the Moto X gave an impression that it is a middle of the road phone. In terms of specs, that would be correct, but in terms of overall performance and user experience, it's right up there with the best phones. The amount of Moto X users might be small, but most people seem very satisfied with their purchase.
Motorola has since dropped the price to $99 on contract or $499 off contract. Motorola also started their advertising campaign a little late. I'm not sure the Moto X will perform a hell of a lot better in the 4th quarter, but it can only go up from here right?
source: WSJ
Sales numbers aren’t great and I agree that the AT&T exclusive hurt the launch, but the Moto X was only available for 1 month of the quarter which softens the blow somewhat. Instead you get over 3 million S4 (on average) sold over the same period. Also, Samsung is at the top of it’s game compared to a rebuilding Motorola mobile. The Moto X is a good step in the right direction.